The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
thought the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice --
thought the whole house
began to tremble and you felt the old bug at your ankles,
"Mind my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop
You knew what you had to do,
thought the wind pried with its stiff fingers.

at the very foundations ---
thought their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the read full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept our company
as you stride deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do ---
determined to save
the only life you could save.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”